


Better, Cooler, Faster, Stronger

by orphan_account



Series: Call it a Sleep Deprived Oneshot [2]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Barry has a seriously weird life, Barry is a little bit depressed, Bro Talks, Gen, Kinda, Not really though, Oliver's life is a bit weird too, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-29
Updated: 2015-12-29
Packaged: 2018-05-10 06:49:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5575489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Barry is still recovering from his fight with Zoom and he finds himself in Star City seeking advice.</p><p>Oliver does his best.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Better, Cooler, Faster, Stronger

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Scarletarrow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scarletarrow/gifts).



Barry Allen was, in the eyes of any ordinary person, running incredibly fast. Somewhere around four hundred miles per hour in fact. To any ordinary person, such a feat would be impossible. But of course, Barry Allen was _not_ an ordinary person. He’d once considered himself the fastest man alive. He knew better now of course. Now he realised that it didn’t matter how fast he ran. There always seemed to be somebody else who could run faster.

Of course, right now he was weak. Slow.                

Pathetic.

He forced himself to speed up, ignoring the burning feeling in his back.

He was supposed to be a hero. People looked _up_ to him. And he’d let every single one of them down. He’d shown the people of Central City that they weren’t safe from this new villain.

And, of course, Caitlin and Cisco…They didn’t understand. At all. In their minds this whole thing was a minor tumble, something he’d just recover from. They didn’t- Couldn’t understand what the fight had done to him. They told him that he was getting better and that’s what counted. They told him that he’d be back on his feet before he knew it. That he’d get Zoom the next time around.

But they didn’t get it…He’d failed everyone. All the people who called the Flash their hero.

He’d failed himself.

Barry felt a laugh rip through his throat as he glimpsed a run down sign.

Star City – Ten Miles

When he entered the city the first place he went to was the nightclub, only to find the basement empty. He reminded himself that Felicity had said something about moving their base someplace else. He could call her, she’d probably be thrilled to find out he was in town. He could go get the tour of this new lair, bankrupt the ex-billionaire by making him pay for takeout.

Instead he found himself on a rooftop, feeling angry about how much energy it had taken just for him to run up the side of the building.

The view was just as capturing as it had been the first time he’d found himself there. It seemed like he was remembering something from another lifetime…His world before the Flash. He could still remember how his first run had felt. The way he’d felt everything connect around him, like watching the pieces of a puzzle slide into place. A thousand different fragments had joined together and made the world finally make sense.

He’d tried explaining this to Cisco and Caitlin but they’d just shrugged and said something about adrenaline rushes and hormone imbalances.

The only person who’d ever understood was…

Barry curled his hand into a fist.

God this was so messed up. The only person who had ever even remotely understood what he was going through happened to be the man who’d murdered his mother along with countless others…

Then there was Zoom.

Barry subconsciously rubbed his back. He could still almost hear the _crack_. That god awful sound of breaking bones that had always made him cringe in movies.

He rubbed his eyes tiredly. Running six hundred miles shouldn’t have made him this _exhausted_. It shouldn’t have taken him so long either. All that progress, all that time working to run faster and for what? So he could run headfirst into another speedster who crippled him without breaking a sweat?!

Barry spun around and hit the first thing he saw, throwing all the force he could muster into the punch. His knuckles shattered upon impact, sections of the cement bricks crumbling. He ignored the pain shooting through his busted hand. It’d heal in a few hours anyway.

“Having some anger management issues?” a voice asked cautiously. On a normal day Barry may have jumped at the sound but he was too tired to care.

“I didn’t get whammied if that’s what you’re asking.”

Oliver considered that for a moment. “I’m going to take a guess and say that the cement block wasn’t the one that got you this worked up.”

Barry sat down on the edge of the roof, letting his legs swing over the sides. He wondered vaguely if the fall would kill him. Hypothetically, of course.

“Felicity has been worried about you,” the vigilante offered conversationally. “They’ve been showing that fight on the news a lot.”

“I’m fine,” Barry replied flatly.

“She said you haven’t been answering her calls.”

“I’m _fine_ ,” he insisted. “Just…haven’t been in much of a talking mood.”

“In my experience, people don’t run six hundred miles just to punch an inanimate object because they’re fine,” Oliver pointed out.

“Well, my life is really complicated right now. I just…I had to get out of Central City for a while,” Barry said irritably. Pause.

“Do you want to talk about it?” the vigilante asked with the slightest hint of uncertainty in his voice. The speedster couldn’t help but snort at this.

“You want me to talk about my feelings? _You_?” he asked incredulously.

“Well, the last time you bottled up your anger I had to shoot you with a tranquiliser so I figure maybe I should give talking it out a try.”

“…Everything is _really_ messed up right now. More so than usual,” Barry warned him.

“I can take it.”

“Well, okay then. I guess we should probably start at the beginning. Remember when I told you that Harrison Wells was the Reverse Flash? Well, he wasn’t actually Harrison Wells. His name was Eobard Thawne and he was from the future. Apparently we were…will be enemies at some point. So he figured out my name…future me’s name and decided to go back in time and kill me as a kid. Future me got kid me out so the Reverse Flash decided to kill my mother instead, I guess he hoped that the whole trauma thing would stop me from becoming the Flash or whatever. But, for some unknown reason, he lost his speed so he couldn’t go back to his own time. He figured that the only way for him to get back was with the Flash’s help so he murdered the real Harrison Wells and used future technology to…become him. Then Eobard took on his identity, built the particle accelerator which in turn gave me my speed,” Barry spat.

“That’s…” Oliver began.

“Oh wait, it gets better. After we figured all this out, he wanted me to open a wormhole through time and space so I could go back and save my mom. In return, he wanted us to build him something that would allow him to travel into the future unharmed. So we did that, I went back in time, future me essentially told me not to interfere before he got kid me out of there. I went back to the present, closed the wormhole before Eobard could go back to his time. He tried to kill me, threatened to kill everyone around me. Then Eddie, you know, Iris’s boyfriend? Well it turns out he was actually one of Eobard’s ancestors so he killed himself which meant Eobard was never born and voila, suddenly there’s a black hole trying to swallow the planet. I managed to close it with the help of FIRESTORM but Ronnie didn’t make it out. And, oh yeah! It opened up a bunch of portals into what we call ‘Earth 2’ which is basically a parallel universe. They even have a Flash over there. His name is Jay, he’s been staying here because he lost his speed after fighting with Zoom and being swallowed by the singularity.” Barry was panting by this point but couldn’t bring himself to care.

“…Anything else I should know about?” Oliver asked wearily.

“Let me think…Harrison Wells, the _real_ Harrison Wells, from Earth 2 is living here for the time being. Cisco’s a meta-human. Zoom has been sending metas from Earth 2 and telling them they can’t go home until they kill me. One of those metas? My ex-girlfriend from Earth 2. Oh, and Zoom kicked my ass and broke my back before holding me up for all of Central City to see and tried to murder me in front of all of my friends…Yeah, I’m pretty sure that about covers it,” he summarised.

Oliver paused for a moment. “I think we both really need a drink.”

“I can’t get drunk.”

“Your life sucks,” he conceded, taking a seat next to Barry. “So…Zoom, huh? Not the best Cisco’s come up with but-”

“Actually Zoom picked his own name as far as I know,” the speedster informed him.

“And he broke your back?”

“Yeah. It’s healing but…I guess I’m just used to being able to break the sound barrier without breaking a sweat. Going from that to not being able to walk…” Barry shrugged. Oliver thought about that for a moment.

“I got stabbed with a sword once and couldn’t walk for a while. It’s not fun…I also happen to know a little something about feeling like you’ve let down a city you swore to protect.”

“People _relied_ on me Oliver,” Barry said, suddenly feeling very small. “And I caused this whole mess because…because I decided to mess with time.”

“It’s not your fault, Barry. And I don’t say that because I’m trying to make you feel better. You couldn’t have known that any of this would happen. Trust me, I have a lot of experience with making the wrong decisions.”

Despite the fact that Caitlin, Cisco, Joe AND Iris had all been telling him this almost non-stop lately, he actually felt a bit better. He stared at his broken hand for a while. He was beginning to feel the pain more intensely now but he couldn't figure out if that was really a bad thing.

“You’re taking all this pretty well,” Barry commented.

“Yeah, well. We’ve had our fair share of weirdness lately…You’re also not the only one who’s had ex-girlfriend trouble,” Oliver said thoughtfully.

“Tried to kill you?” Barry offered sympathetically.

“Came back from the dead actually.”

The speedster’s eyebrows shot up.

“What can I say, Barry? You’re not the only one whose life got strange.”

**Author's Note:**

> And a big fat fabulous thank you to Scarletarrow for sending me the prompt. I don’t know if this is exactly what you had in mind but I did my best. Also a big thank you to all of the people who left kudos on my last fic. I decided to turn this into a series! Who would have guessed it?  
> Leave a comment if you enjoyed and, if you have any prompts for me, feel free to let me know and I’ll see what I can do!


End file.
